We Have Always Done It That Way

In the first edition of this book, I advocated separating “strategy” and “plan.” The primary reason is that when we do “strategic planning,” we end up bolting the weight of our strategy to the details of our plan, making it hard to change, to take in new information, and, in many cases, even to implement. Planning and strategy are simply two different things. They should be “tethered” together, not “bolted.”

But the standard response to my argument since that first edition has been: “Okay, but if we don’t do strategic planning, what do we do instead?” The answer is, you do the real work of strategy. Unfortunately, too many associations find the real work of strategy unfamiliar, and even uncomfortable.

The real work of strategy focuses first on strategic direction—clarifying precisely what drives the association’s success and orienting all decision-making, implementation, and learning in that direction. Honestly, most associations do not do this. They are good at identifying their mission, and they know what programs and services they have, but they rarely can articulate “middle level” strategic thinking that helps everyone from the Board down to the staff understand not only where they are headed, but how they can best get there given the current operating environment. Strategy becomes a guide that everyone uses to evaluate decisions and understand changes in the environment, rather than a thirty-nine-page instruction manual that tells people what they should do.

The second focus of the real work of strategy is learning. What if the world weren’t linear? What if you had to articulate a strategic direction, knowing that you would need to change it on an ongoing basis, but at irregular intervals, based on how the real world unfolds, rather than on the availability of your executive committee? If the world did work that way (and, of course, it does), then you would need to build your organization (structure, process, culture) around learning. Suddenly the work of strategy becomes integrated at all levels, as everyone learns from what they are doing and feeds that learning back into strategic decisions.
Strategy may not be a new concept in your association, but what about the real work of strategy? If you want to go down this road, then prepare yourselves to do things differently. For example:

• Demand creativity. Thriving without creativity only happens in that non-existent linear world.
• Bring more voices into your strategy process. It’s not just beneficial; it is required.
• Describe your association’s entire strategy on the back and front of one page. If you can’t tell a simple story, the system won’t be able to make it happen.
• Re-evaluate your meetings. To learn from what you are doing, you need better conversations.

Tags: Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way // Add Comment »